L-arginine is an amino acid widely used in amino acid supplements, pharmaceutical drugs, foods, etc., and there has been demand for the development of efficient L-arginine production in the related industries.
The method of producing L-arginine by a conventional biological fermentation method is a method to produce L-arginine directly from carbon and nitrogen sources, and various methods including a method using an induced modified strain from a microorganism of the genus Brevibacterium or Corynebacterium, a method using a bacterial cell line developed to have enhanced amino acid-producing ability by cell fusion, etc., have been reported. Recently, a method of using a genetic recombinant strain, wherein a gene which inhibits the expression of arginine-biosynthesizing operon argR was inactivated (U.S. Pat. No. 7,160,705), and a method of using the overexpression of argF in the arginine operon (Korean Patent No. 10-0854234), etc., were reported. In particular, the deletion in argR, which controls the arginine operon, has been considered as an important factor in arginine production.
According to the facts known so far, in a microorganism of Corynebacterium, argCJBDFR gene, which is involved in arginine biosynthesis, is constituted in the form of an operon and is subjected to feedback-inhibition by intracellular arginine (Vehary Sakanyan, et al., Microbiology, 142:9-108, 1996), thus imposing a limitation on its high-yield L-arginine production.